Muslims Demand Fairness Not Favors

By Mahmoud El-Yousseph
October 7, 2008

As a Muslim veteran and proud father of a US army solider, the DVD “Obsession–Radical Islam’s War Against the West” is very disturbing to me. On the surface, it appears to be an educational DVD. However, below this cleverly-packaged surface one will find anti-Muslim propaganda, spreading fear and hatred towards Muslims. It also creates the illusion that there is a war between Islam and Christianity. Even more disturbing is that the Columbus Dispatch saw fit to distribute the DVD as an insert, thereby making the newspaper complicit in spreading hate speech and profiting from it.

I felt compelled to write after reading Editorial Page Editor Glenn Sheller’s October 4th commentary defending the Dispatch’s decision to distribute the DVD. He was basically contradicting the views on the subject expressed in a letter from the President of CAIR-OH on the same subject, published the same day.

I did appreciate the concerns expressed by Mr. Sheller and his perspective on what law-abiding Muslims have to go through as a result of hate speech, bigotry, and discrimination. But somewhere halfway through his column, he lost me. He stated that free speech is more important than Muslim concerns and that CAIR’s reaction to the DVD is equivalent to suppressing freedom.

However, CAIR’s published response and a previous letter on the subject by Eric Weisgerber, a reader from Hilliard, expressed a similar point. Mr. Weisgerber hit the nail on the head when he posed the question to the Dispatch, “would you do it to any other race or religion if the price is right, and what is the difference?” You and I know the answer would be absolutely not. Such propaganda would be rejected right off hand and dismissed as incendiary hate speech.

Speaking of suppressing freedom, Mr. Sheller sounds like the proverbial pot calling the cattle black. Before the Dispatch accuses CAIR of suppressing freedom, inquiring minds want to know why the Columbus Dispatch twice in the last four years refused to publish paid political ads submitted by yours truly? Cases in point:

On the day Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat died in November 2004, the Columbus Dispatch refused to publish an obituary as a paid advertisement which I submitted through a funeral home in Westerville . Another central Ohio daily newspaper did. The obituary was short with no mention of Israel in the text. The newspaper that published it took heat as well as praise from readers, and the funeral home received nasty calls accusing the place of supporting terrorism. What a shame!
One reader asked if the paper would also run an obituary for Osama Bin Laden. Finally the paper ran an editorial defending its decision and my right to free speech. There is no place for censorship under a democracy!

Last February I sent an inquiry about placing a paid political ad in several newspapers across central Ohio about lifting the illegal and inhumane siege imposed on 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza . All papers agreed to do it except the Columbus Dispatch. Just for the record: the ad was comprised by a map of Gaza surrounded by a barbed wire with the slogan beneath: “Lift the siege on Gaza ,” written in Hebrew, Arabic and English. I am proud to say that the first newspaper who agreed to do it was the Jewish Weekly, The New Standard. Surprised by that publication’s response, I asked, “why did you agree to do it when you know you could get backlash from your readers and advertisers? The answer was, “to protect your right to free speech.” Eight months later, I still have not heard from the Columbus Dispatch.

Muslims and Arab living here and elsewhere do not wish to have their faith or ethnicity equated with violence and terrorism. Muslims as well as Arabs are on the forefront when it comes to denouncing terrorism against innocent Jews and Christians here or abroad. In the meantime Muslims and Arabs are subjected to attacks and public insults in both electronic and print media on a daily basis. That is what grinds my gears.

I checked the Dispatch archives about the use of the term “terrorism” as it relates to stories here and in the Middle East . Not one single time was “Jewish terrorism” or “Christian terrorism” used when Muslim were the victims. The aggressors are not Muslims in places like Lebanon , Palestine , Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan. The victims are always killed “in retaliation,” “caught in the cross fire,” or callously referred to as “collateral damage.” Have the folks at the Dispatch and other media outlets ever stopped to think about how obvious is their bias? Excuse the expression, “As long as the dog makes a drop in the backyard, does it make a difference what color the dog is?” Not to me, unless the media favors one terrorist group over the other.

Finally, I must admit I am not a CAIR cardholder. I am also forever grateful to the Columbus Dispatch for giving me a forum for 30 years to address issues of concern to the local Muslim and Arab community on a regular basis. Above all, the Dispatch did vouch for my loyalty and patriotism when it came under question. I may have sounded ungrateful to the Dispatch, but that is a constructive criticism with no malicious intent. Freedom of speech is what I treasure the most living here at home in the America that I love and care about. For that reason, I was willing for 20 years to die for America if need be. I took an oath, which I take seriously; to defend America not only against foreign enemies, but also against domestic ones. That said, Muslims like me and those dedicated men and women at CAIR-OH seek fairness, not favors from the Dispatch and other news medium.

You have highlighted the hypocrisy well, Mahmoud, but I think we all know that these “double-standards” are par for the course with the media today and will continue unabated among the sheeple who cannot see that the Muslims are todays “boogeymen” I wish people would begin to think for themselves and recognise the state requirement of said boogeymen, whether it be “reds under the bed” or “rag-head terrorists” The powers that be cannot survive without us sheeple having some outside “enemy” to fear and stop us addressing the REAL terrorists within the state apparatus. Divide and rule is a device used to perfection over the years and it is way past the time when we should all have become aware of this to stand United against those who profit by perpetuating these divisions. It is ironic how “free speech” critical of muslims is acceptable, yet ANY critcism of the Zionist agenda and their treatment of the Palestinians is “hate speech” in many areas.

Mahmoud, I have enjoyed reading your article immensely. Your sincere concern for Muslims and their predicament in America is indeed impressive.

The same sad situation prevails in my own country, England. I have only to open a newspaper here and I see a picture of some man in a turban and a scary headline with the word “terrorist” in it. The things they say about Muslims they would not dare to say about Jews. Islamophobia, it seems, has more or less been institutionilized in North America and Europe. If you ask these Zionist-controlled media bosses how they can churn out such hate propaganda against Muslims, they will usually shrug and say: “Ah, but we must have free speech!” But speech is only free when it is being deployed against Muslims, it seems, never against Jews. You must never abuse them! Gosh no, that would lead to a second Holocaust, wouldn’t it?

What a pity there is no free speech for the Irvings and the Zundels, the Faurissons and the Tobens, of this world. Free speech for them leads to one place only — a prison cell.

As I was reading John’s remarks above an essay by Larken Rose came to mind. You all might like to read it and perhaps get on his mailing list, read his book, and check out some of the articles in the archives mentioned at the bottom of the story. Thank you, Mahmoud, for this post and I pray that it gets wide circulation. I can not do much, but I can certainly reply to some of the brainless anti-Islam screeds that get sent to my inbox with a message such as this. Perhaps a few will see the light? If there is anything improper or illegal about this cut and paste below, please delete it for me.

—– The Magical Disappearing Crisis A main theme of my book, “How To Be a Successful Tyrant,” is how megalomaniacs love to find an endless list of things to scare us with, and then turn around and promise to save us from those things if we will just give the aspiring tyrants unlimited power. Such scare tactics work with poverty, war, crime, drugs, and the environment. In fact, just about anything that can worry people is used by politicians to scare us into surrendering our freedom and giving them power. Of course, if politicians ever SOLVED any of the problems they like to scare us with, they would lose a piece of their power. So they never do. Not only is it impossible to name any problem that”government” has solved, but it’s impossible to name any problem that they meddled with that didn’t get WORSE. Drugs, terrorism,poverty, education, the mortgage industry, ad infinitum. Is that because they’re really bad at everything, or because they are TRYING to make perpetual problems, in order to provide an excuse for them to have perpetual power? And while they sometimes use real problems for their scare tactics, they almost always greatly exaggerate the truth of the matter, and in some cases simply make up a problem that doesn’t exist at all.As long as we’re all scared of it, whether it’s real or not, they can exploit the situation to increase their power. If we stop being afraid of some particular issue, the tyrants quickly drop it and try something else. If you doubt this–if you think the politicians are telling the truth, and looking out for our best interests–I ask you to consider one simple example (which will probably offend some of you): Not many years ago, you couldn’t turn on the news without seeing astory about AIDS. It was an unimaginable epidemic; a plague that was going to wipe out the world if we didn’t all throw all of our attention (and money) into finding a cure. The talk about it was constant, from the media and all the politicians. We were told, day in and day out, that we were ALL one wrong move away from getting AIDS and dying. If you knew anyone who knew anyone who ever slept with anyone who knew anyone who once met someone who might have had AIDS, YOU WERE GOING TO DIE!!! Unless, of course, you threw your money at the problem, and let politicians create various programs and studies. There was an endless stream of heart-breaking stories, of little kids who got it, hemophiliacs who got it, and even celebrities who got it (anyone remember Magic Johnson?). We were all doomed! Thankfully, in 2001 a cure for AIDS was discovered, and so the crisis was averted, and we stopped hearing about it. Oh, wait. No, it wasn’t. A cure was never discovered. So when is the last time you heard AIDS mentioned on TV? When was the last telethon, or fund-raiser you saw for AIDS “awareness” orresearch? When’s the last time you heard someone expressing concern about AIDS in a movie or TV show, or on the radio? What happened to all the cries that we’d all be dead in ten years? What happened to the crisis-mongering? And why the heck is Magic Johnson still alive? Because it was all a lie, top to bottom, beginning to end. Yes, there are various immune disorders, and yes, some of them kill people. But the omnipresent nature of the disease, and the huge likelihood of catching it, were bald-faced lies. And, as with every lie they tell, once the peoples’ terror started to fade a bit, the fear-mongers dropped it and moved on to something else. The final”cure” for AIDS was 9/11/01, which gave the tyrants a new lie to scare us with: a huge, intricate global network of Muslim terrorists. The government NEEDS unlimited power to protect us from them! Why? Because these evil-doers are brilliant, they’re everywhere, they’re well-funded and high-tech. And over the last seven years, they’ve murdered thousands of Americans! Oh, wait. No they haven’t. They haven’t carried out a single terrorist act on American soil for SEVEN YEARS. Is that because our all-caring government is keeping them in check? Hardly. Terrorism is really easy to commit. That’s why desperate people with few resources do it. If there were even a hundred people bent on murdering Americans, and if they were of even average intelligence, it would have been ridiculously easy to kill hundreds if not thousands of people in this country every year. So why haven’t they? For the same reason that millions aren’t dropping dead from AIDS every year: because it’s all a lie. And it’s not a very good one. At least when they lied about the Soviet Union, it was possible to imagine that there were a bunch of powerful, ingenious Russians out to get us. Instead, there were a few power-happy Russian tyrants desperately trying, without success, to keep their own unstableempire from collapsing. But the way the American politicians and media painted the picture, one day there was an all-knowing, all-powerful evil empire bent on ruling the world, and the next day it was all gone, for no apparent reason. And now we’re all supposed to be scared of cave-dwelling terrorists who haven’t so much as stubbed an American’s toe in this country for seven years? Just how gullible are Americans, anyway? Everytime you watch the news, or read a paper, keep in mind, throughout all of recorded history (and no doubt before that), tyrants have always used FEAR to gain power. And considering how well it works, I doubt they’ll be stopping any time soon. Now let’s go be scared about global warming, and give politicians more power. If we don’t, IT WILL KILL US ALL!! Larken Rosehttp://www.larkenrose.com (P.S. I know of one thing that is WORTH being scared of. It has killed on average a million people a year for the last century, and has injured and/or impoverished billions more. It’s called”government.” The Founders warned us about it, but most of us forgot.) (P.P.S. Past messages to this list can be found here:http://www.rogershermansociety.org/articles.htm ) —–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—–Charset: UTF8Note: This signature can be verified at https://www.hushtools.com/verifyVersion: Hush 3.0 wpwEAQECAAYFAkjsSaIACgkQGmVFo/iGj338sgP/UP/wRpKw1nQewSR7UeSr1k6xYWBmvGVeVqapljxMcM06V8+5v4tG5id7jrKnjbIkAJFwdceIJ9SSX/ohAEexUvO2BoYKMM/JQAUfZBR2MM33MFsi4huV6Lwpmrm9SgUQXgex40NkB9E/XdBL6IrAfn1zVgDWzq2k3HWqur47odA==wEAw—–END PGP SIGNATURE—– ———————————————————————To subscribe, send a blank message to tmds-on@mail-list.com

I’m 60 years old. But I can remember as a youngster saying ” That’s not fair.” Fairness is essential to Life. Another word for fairness is ” Justice.” Without fairness or justice than, we have a problem.
I’ll give you an example of not being fair or not being just. I live in a community that cites me and my wife for citations that it ignores with others. I got a letter from my City telling me that I had to move my trashcans back from the front of my house. The letter read 25 feet back from the front porch. They would check within 7 days to see if I moved my trash cans back. To avoid going to court before a Judge I moved my trash cans, so that I didn’t get a several hundred dollar fine. I moved the trash cans into the back yard to avoid a problem with a future court appearance.
Now there would be no problem with me and my wife if they treated everyone fairly! But the problem is that other neighbor’s close by have their trashcans by their front porch and they have never gotten a letter from the City telling them to move them.
My wife and I not only feel that this is unfair, but also that this is unjust. There is one set of rules for me and my wife, and another set of rules for other’s in the same neighborhood. I could go on and on with examples but I won’t. But it really burns me that people are treated so unfairly by these Cities. This is truly unjust and this could lead to war. Ray McGovern said in one of his talks that ” Justice leads to Peace.” He couldn’t be more right!
I wrote on another comment blog that we should try to imagine putting 30 million dvd’s of ” Missing Link ” in the same newspapers which clearly indict’s Jews for 9/11. If the same newspaper’s allowed this distribution than that would be fairness and justice. But we know that there is no such thing as ” fairness and justice” when it comes to these people who are behind demonizing 1 billion 300 million Muslims. The demonic Jews have no idea of ” Fairness” or ” Justice” when it concerns those who they have decided to demonize the most. The Semetic Arab Muslims would be called ” AntiSemites” for even suggesting to distribute a dvd such as ” Missing Link” which proves that Jews attacked Americans on 9/11. Semites are Anti-Semites! Huh! If that isn’t an Oxymoron!

To Richard : Aids is all a lie ?… Well you’re right, but not in the context you’re using… there IS a huge Aids problem, and in 10 yrs. ~ 75 % of Africa will be DEAD from Aids ! That’s not a lie… what IS A LIE ~ is that there is no cure ~ because there actually is ~ they just wont tell anybody ! There are many ways to CURE cancer, too… MANY ways, but if any doctor tells you any of this ~ he WILL lose his licence, and never practice in North America again. Ever. Period. ~~ Truth is, Aids is man-made, and designed to KILL certain people, and keep others on expensive medications for the rest of their lives. ~ Made in America ~